Orientation: Organisations continuously find it a challenge to focus on the right areas that would result in successful and effective leadership development. This article reports on a comprehensive study to identify the leadership development process maturity areas fit for Southern Africa.

Research purpose: This article aims to identify and report on Eurocentric and Afrocentric leadership development process maturity areas and assess how these are similar or different.

Motivation for the study: This study was conducted to help enhance the understanding of which Eurocentric and Afrocentric leadership development areas, organisations, especially in Southern Africa, need to focus on in support of a mature leadership development process.

Research approach: A qualitative, deductive approach was adopted, which included an extensive, in-depth literature review, followed by in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Southern African leadership development expert panel members.

Main findings: A complementary, inclusive and comprehensive list of 125 leadership development process maturity areas was developed within the Southern African context, which could be used by leadership development practitioners as a guide to focus their resources and leadership development efforts. It also functions as a new foundation for future leadership development research.

Practical implications: Southern African organisations should focus more on what works in this geographical context to ensure that focused leadership development interventions are implemented, resulting in a higher return on leadership development investment.

Contribution and value-added: This article contributes to the leadership development body of knowledge, specifically relating to the maturity of this process within the Southern African context.

Keywords: leadership development; process; maturity areas; Southern Africa; Afrocentric; Eurocentric.

Introduction

Long-term sustainability of companies depends on the choice and cultivation of their future leaders (Conger & Fulmer, 2003). As a result, companies spend enormous amounts of money on leadership development (Armitage, Brooks, Carlen, & Schultz, 2006; Cohen, 2019; Martineau, Hoole, & Patterson, 2009; Thomas, Jules, & Light, 2012; Vogel, Reichard, Batistič, & Černe, 2020). Yet, organisations do not necessarily know exactly which leadership development areas they should invest in so as to ensure the best possible return on its learning investment. The ultimate goal of leadership development research should be to identify which components of the leadership development process have the most significant outcomes and impact (Hopkins & Meyer, 2019).

Owusu-Frempong (2005) referred to Afrocentrism as an African worldview and value system that guides the knowledge of the people of Africa and knowledge transfer thereof to future generations. Iyioke (2017) claimed that to deny Afrocentrism is to effectively deem all life and cultural experiences as being the same. He adds that Afrocentrism is an approach that deals with life experiences in Africa. This view was supported by Kumah-Abiwu (2016) when he called for African intellectuals to persist with research to expose common cultural foundations and values amongst Africans as part of the Afrocentric paradigm. He makes an important distinction between scholars who truly share Afrocentric ideas and those who claim to adopt a pure Afrocentric paradigm but actually share strong Eurocentric views in their analyses of Africa. Chawane’s (2016) view is that Afrocentricity represents a call for recognition of the African viewpoint.

Eurocentrism holds a worldview (Akpan & Odohoedi, 2016), which advocates the use of European and United States standards and models (Hoskins, 1992), whereas Afrocentrism deals with a specific cultural history that originated in Africa and consists of norms based on which African people judge or measure themselves. According to Chawane (2016), the Eurocentric version prioritises Europeans and does not acknowledge the historical role Africans have played in world development. Hoskins (1992) further distinguishes between these two worldviews – Afrocentrism places the human being central to all existence, whilst Eurocentrism places political power and material possessions central to all existence.

Research purpose and objectives

In most African organisations, the building of a robust leadership development system is utterly neglected (Walumbwa, Avolio, & Aryee, 2011). There is also a claim from Iwowo (2015, p. 6) that ‘there have been several calls for a more indigenised model of leadership in Africa’. There is increasing interest in research and developing theory focused on leadership across cultural contexts (Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009), as most leadership studies have been conducted in a Eurocentric context. Historical research has proven that many companies do not have a process in place that is structured to develop its leaders, as such a leadership development process will also focus on future competencies and capabilities that the company thinks it needs (Van Dongen, 2014).

A gap has therefore been identified in the field of leadership development, specifically in the Southern African geographical context, to pursue research that would achieve the following research objectives (ROs):

The purpose of this research study, after achieving these ROs, is that it will lay a solid foundation to address some of the concerns that were highlighted with regard to a lack of indigenised leadership development systems and leadership models in Africa.

Research design

The researchers adopted an approach similar to what Hanson (2013) followed to develop his Leadership Development Interface Model. Firstly, secondary data were gathered from existing literature, followed by empirical research. This approach connected leader and leadership development with individuals and the organisation. The researchers combined the data from qualitative interviews with Southern African leadership development specialists, with the data from a rigorous literature review of leadership and leadership development, to develop holistic Leadership Development Process Maturity Areas for further analysis.

A systematic process was followed in the present study to access leadership development articles, textbooks and other credible, peer-reviewed secondary sources. To identify the leadership development process maturity areas, a structured content analysis approach was applied and only those factors that were critical to the successful implementation of a leadership development process were extracted from the literature.

A total of 55 leadership development process maturity areas were identified from 11 published books and 63 academic or peer-reviewed articles on the topic of leadership development. Whilst not deliberately selected as such, all these books and virtually all the articles were European or United States sources, which jointly represent Eurocentric sources. New literature sources were no longer added to the review process, when it became clear that data saturation had been achieved – in other words, when no new themes emerged (see Braun & Clarke, 2013; Guest, Namey, & Mitchell, 2013). Ten themes emerged, namely leadership development methods, required resources, alignment, continuity, culture, design, feedback, management support, skills or competencies and customisation. These themes formed the basis of the interview questions, conducted with the expert panel members, as each of the Southern African leadership development experts were asked, in their experience, which areas were critical to the success of the leadership development process in organisations, as it relates to each of these themes within this process. As recommended by Braun and Clarke (2013), an additional open-ended question was added, posed at the end of the interview, which allowed each participant to add any knowledge he or she deemed important but, which did not fall under any of the 10 themes.

Expert panel population

The expert panel population comprised all and everybody who specialises in leadership development in Africa. However, it has to be borne in mind that different African regions are characterised by different contextual factors, history, political backgrounds and cultural richness and diversity. Therefore, leadership development is not necessarily the same in all regions in Africa (Muchiri, 2011). For these reasons, and for the sake of practicability, the scope of this study was then limited to Southern Africa, the most southern region in Africa.

The following countries are the member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) (https://www.sadc.int/member-states/): Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Therefore, the population of this study comprised the leadership development practitioners in SADC member countries.

Sample method and participant profile

Purposive sampling (a form of non-probability sampling) was used in the present study, as it is suitable for qualitative research, which tends to use smaller samples as compared to quantitative research (Braun & Clarke, 2013). Guest et al. (2013) posited that the logic and power of purposive sampling can only be realised by applying appropriate criteria for inclusion of participants in a study. The criteria for inclusion in this study were similar to those employed by Burke and Collins (2005) in their study on providers of leadership development. The participant profile that was sought and obtained, possessed the following research criteria – they had to have:

Purposive sampling was first applied on a limited scale, where participants 3 and 7, who were well-known to the author from previous involvement in leadership development projects, were chosen based on their experience and level of involvement in the leadership development field. Participants 1 and 2 were referred by the co-author. Thereafter, snowball sampling, another non-probability sampling technique whereby participants referred other possible participants (Gray, 2018; Guest et al., 2013) was used to get additional participants. Guest et al. (2013) explained that snowball sampling makes it possible to utilise the social networks of research participants, enabling sampling from hard-to-reach populations. Noy (2008) stated that snowball sampling (Figure 1) is arguably the most widely used sampling method in qualitative research across various disciplines in the social sciences.

Expert panel and rational for choosing participants

Expert knowledge is valuable in contributing to research, especially if empirical information on the topic is scarce or not readily available (Orsi, Geneletti, & Newton, 2011). Guest et al. (2013) highlighted the importance of including the most knowledgeable individuals and documenting multiple viewpoints, in order to enhance the trustworthiness of a research study.

Experts were therefore chosen based on them being considered active and leading practitioners in the field of leadership development. Krueger et al. (2017) stated that the participation of experts enhances the accuracy of a study’s findings. They also suggested that experts on a topic possess diverse pertinent expertise and that a process be used that encourages the active sharing of this knowledge.

As a result of the specialised nature of the field of study, nine experts were identified who met or exceeded the stated research criteria and were selected to participate in the study. The demographic details of this sample of leadership development practitioners who took part in the study are provided in Table 1.

The in-depth, semi-structured interviews allowed for the probing of the leadership development experts to provide greater detail on their responses (see Braun & Clarke, 2013; Gray, 2018). Open-ended questions were used to maximise the inductive and conversational aspects of the interview (Guest et al., 2013). As recommended by these authors, each expert was interviewed separately, using open-ended questions to gather data on each theme. Inductive probing was conducted by asking questions like ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ to gain deeper insights.

A pilot interview (Guest et al., 2013; Mouton, 2013) was conducted with one participant. The intention was not to use the data, only to test the questions, but because of the richness of the data that were gathered during this interview, it was then classified as the first interview. Minor adjustments were made to the sequence of the open-ended questions and the interviewing process, before the other eight leadership development experts could be interviewed. All interviews were recorded (Braun & Clarke, 2013; Creswell, 2014; Gray, 2018; Guest et al., 2013).

There are no fixed rules for coding qualitative data analysis, as it is challenging to analyse a vast amount of written data and convert the findings into a compelling argument (Gray, 2018). Passages were labelled with terms that were relevant to the RO, as explained by Belotto (2018) to identify all possible leadership development process maturity areas from the transcript. After coding the data, the next step was to look for larger patterns across the dataset (Braun & Clarke, 2013). Thematic analysis was applied and ‘involves identifying and coding emergent themes within data’ (Guest et al., 2013, p. 9). With the thematic analysis process, new Afrocentric and existing Eurocentric themes were identified from the coded transcriptions. In determining to what extent, the identified critical areas are different and or similar from a Eurocentric versus an Afrocentric point of view, the themes were compared. Similarities and differences had to be analysed and documented further although, by also categorising these areas as more process related or more people related.

Strategies to ensure data quality and integrity

Various approaches were followed to ensure quality and rigour across all phases of the study (Guba, 1981; Shenton, 2004). With regard to credibility – structured content analysis combined with literature reviews using peer-reviewed articles, as well as in-depth, semi-structured interviews are all well-established methods in qualitative research. In addition to data accuracy and other quality checks, triangulation was employed when similarities and differences between the literature review and in-depth, semi-structured interview data sets were analysed (Flick, 2007; Gray, 2018).

Furthermore, strategies were employed to ensure participants’ honesty and iterative questioning took place during the in-depth, semi-structured interviews to confirm participant feedback accuracy. Transferability, dependability and confirmability were also addressed, which included steps that were taken to avoid researchers bias and the use of a data-tracking log to manage the data.

Ethical consideration

This article followed all ethical standards for a research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.

Results and discussions

Results obtained from the extensive in-depth literature review

A total of 55 Euro-centric leadership development process maturity areas (across 598 citations) were identified from the literature, namely:

The identification of these 55 Eurocentric leadership development process maturity areas from historical research, addressed RO1.

Results obtained from the in-depth semi-structured interviews

The in-depth, semi-structured interviewing process resulted in identifying the following 70 new Afrocentric leadership development process maturity areas:

The identification of these Afrocentric leadership development process maturity areas addressed RO2. Linking the outcomes of the analysis to existing literature by determining how the findings contribute to, further develop or challenge what we already knew about the research topic is important (Braun & Clarke, 2013).

The identification of these 70 new Afrocentric leadership development process maturity areas allowed for a comparison of these areas with the 55 existing Eurocentric areas from the literature review.

Comparing Afrocentric and Eurocentric leadership development process maturity areas

Hoskins (1992) observed that Afrocentricity is a mindset that is rooted in the African communal value system and heritage. He added that, in Afrocentricity, people are the central focus or ‘centrality of existence’, whereas in Eurocentricity, people are not central and the focus is on material possessions and political power. One of the findings of the present study is that the Afrocentric leadership development process maturity areas that were identified from the in-depth, semi-structured interviews seem to be significantly more people orientated than the Eurocentric areas that were identified from the literature review.

Applying thematic analysis, 51 of the original 55 Eurocentric areas that were identified from the literature review were confirmed by one or more of the nine research participants as a critical requirement in the leadership development process in organisations, from an Afrocentric point of view. The focus in this section is a comparison of areas that were originally classified from the literature as important from a Eurocentric point of view, with the Afrocentric areas that were extracted from the in-depth, semi-structured interviews that were conducted.

In the same manner in which the themes were originally assigned to each of the 55 Eurocentric areas, the identical themes were also used and assigned to the 70 Afrocentric areas. Each of the 125 statements was therefore classified by theme, but also as either being more process related or more people related. In analysing these results, the 55 Eurocentric areas seem to be more process-related or process-driven, whereas the 70 Afrocentric areas seem more focused on people-related issues or prioritisation of the developing leader and his or her specific needs.

The detailed observations were as follows

In both sets of data, leadership development methods were the most prevalent theme across all the statements.

For the Eurocentric data set this theme represented 27% (or 15) of the 55 statements versus 23% (or 16) of the 70 statements for the Afrocentric perspective. However, of these 15 Eurocentric statements, 67% were classified as process related. Only 33% were therefore classified as people-related, as opposed to 88% of the 16 Afrocentric statements being categorised as people-related statements. The Eurocentric statements typically included areas such as job expansion, stretch assignments and action-learning, compared with the Afrocentric statements under this theme typically including the following areas: teaching the developing leader to be able to operate in a world that is VUCA; a focus on indigenous leadership development methods to cater for different groups of people and ensuring that the leader is not overwhelmed with too many leadership development interventions during the development process.

The Design theme was the second-largest priority in both the Eurocentric and Afrocentric data sets. For the Afrocentric dataset, this theme also represented 23% (or 16) of the 70 statements, versus 13% (or 7) of the 55 statements for the Eurocentric perspective. A similar observation was made with the Design theme as with the Leadership development methods theme in the previous paragraph: of the seven Eurocentric statements, 71% were classified as process-related, or, conversely, only 29% were classified as people-related statements. This was again in contrast to the 63% (or 10) of the 16 Afrocentric statements that were categorised as people related. Table 2 highlights examples of statements that were categorised under the Design theme, indicating the contrast between the Eurocentric and Afrocentric views.

Another interesting observation was that Culture, with regard to frequency, was ranked as the third-most important Afrocentric theme, but ranked as only the eighth-most important Eurocentric theme. The remaining themes of Required resources, Alignment, Continuity, Feedback, Management support, Skills or competencies and Customisation ranked similarly from a relative position or percentage point of view, when comparing the Afrocentric and Eurocentric views.

Overall, across all 10 themes, almost two-thirds (65%) of the Eurocentric statements were classified as process-related, where the picture was reversed for the Afrocentric perspective, where two-thirds (67%) of all statements were people-related.

In summary, it was observed from the analysis that there is certainly some truth in the claim by Hoskins (1992) that Eurocentrism does not prioritise the human factor or element as a central theme, to the extent that Afrocentrism does. This is an important validation as designers, developers and implementers of leadership development processes in organisations need to take into consideration that the content of these processes needs to be adapted to the unique requirements of the Afrocentric or Eurocentric geographical context in which they operate, in order to be successful.

The detailed observations that were made in comparing the Eurocentric and Afrocentric areas, addressed RO3.

Practical implications

The findings of this research should benefit all Southern African organisations, who assumed that its leadership development process could be based on Eurocentric areas only. It would also be of value to multinational organisations that operate in Africa, as these organisations may have erroneously assumed that a Eurocentric approach to leadership development would necessarily be successful in their African operations. The research findings allow these organisations to place more focus on Afrocentric leadership development process maturity areas, which is representative of ‘what works’ in the Southern African geographical context.

Southern African organisations that are serious about the success of their leadership development process and about investing in their people for the right reasons, including financial gain, should use the results from this research to close its leadership development process gaps. This would be achieved by including in its leadership development strategy, and actively driving the implementation of, the areas that have been identified as critical to the success of leadership development in this geographical context. This process should be led by Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), managing directors and human resources directors, as support at the highest echelons in organisations is vital to the success of such programmes.

Limitations and future research

The biggest limitation to this study is that it was completed at organisational level across all levels of leadership and also that it is difficult to know where to start in terms of focusing on a comprehensive list of 125 leadership development process maturity areas. This article reports on the first phase of a more comprehensive study. The second phase of the study used the findings from this research to successfully shortlist these leadership development process maturity areas and to then include it in a measure or ‘tool’ that could be used to assess, according to the different individual levels of leadership (supervisory level and junior management, middle management and senior management levels), to what extent organisations are mature as far as its leadership development process is concerned.

Conclusion

Bent-Goodley, Fairfax and Carlton-LaNey (2017) highlighted the fact that Afrocentric researchers should promote the voice of African research participants, relate their unique experiences and use their stories to generate knowledge. This research study answers this call and makes a significant and unique contribution to the body of knowledge on leadership development. From the extensive literature review conducted in the secondary research phase, it was obvious that there was a lack of Afrocentric leadership development research. This view is supported by authors such as Bolden and Kirk (2009), Geber and Keane (2013), Kuada (2010) and Mbigi (2005).

The research revealed that almost all of the Eurocentric leadership development process maturity areas were deemed relevant by the Southern African leadership development experts, as critical to the leadership development process. In addition to these areas, the research participants have identified 70 other areas that are critical to the successful implementation of the leadership development process in organisations within the Southern African geographical context. When comparing these two sets of data, it became apparent that the focus of the Afrocentric areas differed from that of the Eurocentric areas. Afrocentric leadership development process maturity areas were found to be more people related as opposed to Eurocentric areas that were more process related.

This article focused extensively on extracting an Afrocentric perspective on the critical success areas that are required for leadership development in organisations. This addressed the gap in the knowledge identified by Chawane (2016), that Eurocentric literature does not acknowledge African perspectives.

Owusu-Frempong (2005) called for a joint employment of both African and European views in harmonious growth and development of a society. This view is shared by Chawane (2016) when he calls for the co-existence of Eurocentricity and Afrocentricity. According to Iwowo (2015), a system that combines indigenous African leadership development knowledge with mainstream Eurocentric leadership development theories, is the most viable option for leadership development in Africa. By achieving the stated ROs in this study, a complementary, inclusive and comprehensive list of 125 leadership development process maturity areas was developed within the Southern African context, which can be used by leadership development practitioners as a guide to focus their resources and leadership development efforts. The output from the current research study allows for the 70 newly identified Afrocentric areas, being part of the stated comprehensive list of areas, to be included in the leadership development processes in organisations, which creates a new foundation for future leadership development research.

Acknowledgements

H.v.d.W. conducted the literature review, collected and processed all the data and was also responsible for the write-up of the article. L.H. guided the conceptualisation and interpretation of the results, provided commentary throughout the research and co-authored the article.

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors.

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Original Research

Leadership development process maturity: An Afrocentric versus Eurocentric perspective

Hendrik C. (Hekkie) van der Westhuizen, Lia M.M. Hewitt

Abstract

Introduction

Research purpose and objectives

Research design

Expert panel population

Sample method and participant profile

Expert panel and rational for choosing participants

Strategies to ensure data quality and integrity

Ethical consideration

Results and discussions

Results obtained from the extensive in-depth literature review

Results obtained from the in-depth semi-structured interviews

Comparing Afrocentric and Eurocentric leadership development process maturity areas

The detailed observations were as follows

Practical implications

Limitations and future research

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Competing interests

Authors’ contributions

Funding information

Data availability

Disclaimer

References